Media Mention: Greg Kruczek, Voice of America
Where: Voice of America (VoA), “Iraq’s Christians cancel Easter celebrations to support Cardinal Sako”
Competition helps expose demographic and cultural biases in generative AI tools
Penn State’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence announced the winners of its first-ever “Bias-a-thon.” The competition, held Nov. 13–16, asked Penn Staters to identify prompts that led popular generative AI tools to produce biased or stereotype-reinforcing outputs.
IST Professor Alan Peslak receives Meritorious Award for research excellence
Penn State Scranton Professor of Information Sciences and Technology Alan Peslak has been recognized with a Meritorious Paper Award for his outstanding contributions at the Information Systems and Computing Academic Professionals (ISCAP) Conference.
True: Fact checkers tend to agree on validity of news claims, researchers say
Fact-checking organizations like Snopes and Politifact have generally agreed on the validity of news claims, according to researchers from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.
World Campus celebrates science and technology programs
Penn State World Campus is highlighting its science and technology programs during its 25th anniversary.
Penn Staters invited to compete to find bias in generative AI tools
Penn State’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence will host “Bias-a-thon,” a competition to expose biases in current-day AI tools. The virtual event will take place from Monday, Nov. 13, to Thursday, Nov. 16, and is open to anyone with an active Penn State email address.
IST researchers earn best paper award at natural language generation conference
A paper authored by students and faculty from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology received the Best Long Paper award at the 16th International Natural Language Generation Conference.
College of Information Sciences and Technology welcomes nine new faculty members
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology has welcomed nine new faculty members in 2023.
New course examines opportunities, challenges, concerns around generative AI
“Emerging Technologies in Popular Culture,” a new course offered by the Penn State College of Information Systems and Technology, invites undergraduates to explore the questions, opportunities and challenges related to generative artificial intelligence.
Center for Socially Responsible AI awards Big Ideas Grants to five projects
The Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence awarded more than $212,000 to advance five interdisciplinary research projects as part of its Big Ideas Grant program. Awarded projects feature researchers from six departments across four colleges and institutes.
Email scammers tailor methods to target universities
Email-based scams sent to members of a university community are more personalized and compelling and present unique risks, such as providing unauthorized access to university systems, compared to those sent to the general population, according to new research from Penn State.
College of IST awards seed grants to 8 projects
The Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology recently announced eight projects that will receive funding from the college’s seed grant program.
IT students at Penn State Wilkes-Barre get experience in cybersecurity lab
Cybersecurity is a growing field full of career possibilities, and students at Penn State Wilkes-Barre are able to study the field firsthand thanks to an on-campus lab. The lab allows faculty at Penn State Wilkes-Barre to apply the principles they are teaching in lecture courses to real-world examples and scenarios.
Beyond memorization: Text generators may plagiarize beyond 'copy and paste'
Language models, possibly including ChatGPT, paraphrase and reuse ideas from training data without citing the source, raising plagiarism concerns, according to a Penn State-led research team that conducted the first study to directly examine the phenomenon.
Information Sciences and Technology faculty, staff recognized with annual awards
Faculty and staff in the College of Information Sciences and Technology were recognized at the college’s annual awards event this week. Recipients were nominated by their IST colleagues and selected by a review committee for their excellence in teaching, research and service.
Center for Socially Responsible AI awards seed funding to 6 projects
The Penn State Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence recently announced the results of its third seed funding competition. The center awarded $145,000 to advance six interdisciplinary research projects that feature researchers from eight colleges and institutes.
Researchers propose methods for automatic detection of doxing
A new automated approach to detect doxing — a form of cyberbullying in which certain private or personally identifiable information is publicly shared without an individual's consent or knowledge — may help social media platforms better protect their users, according to researchers from Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology
On the Bridge — December 2022
A compilation of recent news, highlights, and achievements from the College of Information Sciences and Technology community.
IST’s Anna Squicciarini named cyberspace program director at NSF
Anna Squicciarini, Frymoyer Chair in Information Sciences and Technology, has been named a program director in the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace cluster of the National Science Foundation, effective Sept. 26.
Deepfakes expose vulnerabilities in certain facial recognition technology
Mobile devices use facial recognition technology to help users quickly and securely unlock their phones, make a financial transaction or access medical records.
Sharing source-backed information can help reduce COVID-19 misinformation online
If you see fake news about COVID-19 circulating on your social media feeds, say something — if you have a reliable source to back it up. You could help other users to be less susceptible to misinformation, according to a new study by researchers at the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.
IST Assistant Professor Linhai Song honored with NSF CAREER award
Linhai Song, assistant professor in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology, is the recipient of a 2022 Faculty Early Career Development award from the National Science Foundation.
IST’s Dongwon Lee receives Fulbright Cyber Security Scholar Award
Dongwon Lee, professor of information sciences and technology, is the recipient of a 2022 Fulbright Cyber Security Scholar Award. Lee will complete his Fulbright fellowship in the psychology department at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom as part of his sabbatical leave during the 2022-23 academic year.
Guided understanding, not rules, could help children stay safer online
As an increasing number of children use digital technologies to play, communicate, create, socialize and learn, the number of opportunities for their privacy to be exploited continues to grow.
Facial recognition tech in public could yield perceptions of workplace fairness
Many people use facial recognition technology on their personal devices, to quickly and securely enter a password or complete an online transaction. But when that same technology is deployed in public settings — such as to screen airport passengers or to grant access to a secure location — how do individuals whose images are captured feel?
Anna Squicciarini named Frymoyer Chair in IST
Anna Squicciarini, Penn State professor of information sciences and technology, has been named Frymoyer Chair in Information Sciences and Technology, effective Dec. 1.
New game can help users identify, avoid online echo chambers
Researchers at the College of Information Sciences and Technology have developed a theory-based game that enables a player to test their own awareness of content that could result in an echo chamber and to observe how echo chambers are accelerated by the spread of misinformation.
Honeypot security technique can also stop attacks in natural language processing
As online fake news detectors and spam filters become more sophisticated, so do attackers’ methods to trick them — including attacks through the “universal trigger.” In this learning-based method, an attacker uses a phrase or set of words to fool an indefinite number of inputs, which could lead to more fake news appearing in your social media fe
Women and lower-education users more likely to tweet personal information
When it comes to what users share on Twitter, women and users who never attended college voluntarily disclose more personal information than users from other socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds — potentially making these populations more susceptible to online privacy threats, according to a recent study led by the Penn State College of Inf
$1.2 million NSF grant to create search engine for online privacy research
A $1.2 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant will help researchers build a search engine and create other resources for scientists who need to scour billions of online documents to improve online privacy.
Clickbait headlines might not lure readers as much, may confuse AI
A Penn State team of researchers found that clickbait often did not perform any better and, in some cases, performed worse than traditional headlines. They also found that artificial intelligence systems designed to spot clickbait struggled with the task.
Researchers test detection methods for AI-generated content
In an effort to combat malicious use of artificial intelligence text generators—for example, an adversary generating fake news to share on social media—researchers at the College of Information Sciences and Technology analyzed eight different state-of-the-art natural language generators to identify whether each had a distinct writing style that
Machine learning algorithm may be the key to timely, inexpensive cyber-defense
Attacks on vulnerable computer networks and cyber-infrastructure — often called zero-day attacks — can quickly overwhelm traditional defenses. A Penn State-led team of researchers has used a machine learning approach, based on a technique known as reinforcement learning, to create an adaptive cyber-defense against these attacks.
Tricking fake news detectors with malicious user comments
New research from a team at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology shows how fake news detectors can be manipulated through user comments to flag true news as false and false news as true, even if the adversary is not the story’s original author.
Penn State SBDC program to help businesses protect their data, privacy and tech
In recognition of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the Penn State Small Business Development Center is partnering with the Harrisburg LaunchBox to host a free, virtual event, “Cybersecurity: Safeguarding Your Small Business," on Oct. 15.
IST doctoral students receive IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award
Graduate students Yueqi Chen and Wenbo Guo, both doctoral candidates in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, have earned the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship award in recognition and support of their work in cybersecurity.
IST cybersecurity program helps meet a global security demand
The College of IST is helping to fill a global demand through the cybersecurity analytics and operations bachelor’s degree program, launched in 2017. Its first class of graduates, having earned their degrees in May, are ready to tackle cybersecurity challenges that individuals and organizations around the world face.
IST researchers exploit vulnerabilities of AI-powered game bots
Researchers in the College of Information Sciences and Technology have designed an algorithm that was trained to defeat a world-class bot — an AI-driven program that plays on behalf of a human — in the award-winning computer game StarCraft II. Their work highlights vulnerabilities in bots that are created using deep reinforcement learning.
IST research aims to understand a global pandemic
Since the novel coronavirus began its spread earlier this year, College of Information Sciences and Technology faculty and students have been innovative in addressing a variety of challenges related to COVID-19, including how to equip researchers with the most up-to-date information, how to educate the public about mitigation tactics, and how mo
IST research well-represented at Knowledge Discovery in Databases conference
The College of Information Sciences and Technology was well-represented at the 2020 ACM Knowledge Discovery in Databases Conference, held virtually Aug. 23-27.
Program introduces students to machine learning and security research
This summer, three undergraduate students from three higher education institutions got an exclusive, in-depth introduction to research topics focused on machine learning in cybersecurity through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates site program sponsored by National Science of Foundation and hosted by Penn State’s College of Information S
Center for Security Research and Education announces seed grant awardees
The Center for Security Research and Education (CSRE) has selected 13 interdisciplinary projects through its spring 2020 seed grant program. CSRE is providing a total of $300,000 in funding for the projects, with an additional $300,000 in matching and supplemental funding from other colleges, departments, and institutes.
Two College of IST faculty members earn Amazon Research Awards
Professor James Wang and Assistant Professor Xinyu Xing — both from the College of Information Sciences and Technology — are among 51 computing experts representing 39 universities worldwide to receive 2019 Amazon Research Awards.
Understanding trade-offs between connectedness and online privacy during crises
A new grant is helping researchers explore how attitudes toward privacy change during times of crises, and whether oversharing has been expedited or even encouraged during the coronavirus pandemic.
IST seed grants support tech projects related to COVID-19
The College of Information Sciences and Technology recently announced six projects that will receive funding from the college’s seed grant program. Each project will take different approaches to tackle various challenges and needs related to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
IST professor receives Fulbright Cyber Security Award
Anna Squicciarini, associate professor of information sciences and technology, has received a Fulbright Cyber Security Award to conduct research in London in summer 2021.
Two IST doctoral students earn IBM Ph.D. Fellowships
Yueqi Chen and Wenbo Guo, both studying in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, are among 24 doctoral students worldwide who have been awarded 2020 IBM Ph.D. Fellowships.